


Always a Clone

by FireSoul



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22686247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: Sometimes Ava just can't stop thinking about it, who and what she is. This is one of those times.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe
Kudos: 76





	Always a Clone

It’s always something small.

It’s a joke she doesn’t find funny, or one that she does but no one else laughs. It’s the looks Sara gives her when she starts spewing facts about serial killers, signaling that no person should have such a vast mental encyclopedia for a topic like that. It’s when she catches herself overstepping into Sara’s Captain territory. It’s when she has no idea what to do next, but most of the others all find ways to pick themselves up and move one.

It isn’t when Mick calls her a clone, but it is when the rest of her friends tell her she is more than that.

She is more than that; but she is still that.

She doesn’t stay up late at night thinking about it, or crying over it, not anymore. Not since she first found out. But it is always there. She tries to let it not be, and some days she can almost forget, but then she remembers. It’s still there. It was there in all the good moments, all the bad, all of the in-between, and no matter what she does it will never go away.

She doesn’t talk about it for a multitude of reasons. For one there would be no point. She is a clone. No one can change that. No amount of talking can make that fact a lie, Gideon can’t do anything medically to change it, and not even John Constantine himself has a spell that could make it so she wasn’t built in a factory. Even with time travel, the best she could do would be to undo her existence altogether, and she doesn’t want that.

So, she is a clone.

Another reason she doesn’t talk about it is she is tired of hearing that she is more than what she was designed to be. She doesn’t care about that. She knows she’s more than whatever the AVA creators had in mind for her, but that doesn’t change that a part of her very much is whatever she was designed to be; doesn’t change that she was designed in the first place.

In truth, she doesn’t know what her original function was. She supposes she was designed to oversee something like a factory, or an office of some sort. She doesn’t want to know. If she knew that would mean she would have more limits. She would know exactly what her manual dictates she can and cannot do, and she doesn’t want to adhere to any preset controls.

But, there are days when she thinks that is exactly what she’s doing.

How can she surpass her limits if she doesn’t even know what they are? Can it work like that?

Probably not, she supposes, but she still clings to the hope that it can. She hopes that if one day she ever does break down and ask Gideon to show her her design intentions, she might see things like “this AVA is unable to defend self” or “Unequipped for emotional function”. Things like that, things she’s done. Then, maybe she wouldn’t be what she is.

But, even if she does surpass her limits, she is still a clone.

Some days she thinks about the other AVAs. The ones she saw in the future. She knows she’s different from them, she saw their robotic approach to their assigned tasks. She assumes that is why Rip stole her out of all of them. Rip, judging by the files he kept of the original Legends, might have had a soft spot for outcast. Maybe she was a factory reject; a failure of a clone and most certainly not human.

Some days she goes so far as to consider changing her name, but it feels like a Band-Aid. Like an ill-advised tattoo or a drunken one night stand, something that would make her feel better for a moment but ultimately would be nothing more than an attempt to run away.

Normal people do those things, though. They don’t analyze the possibility of it backfiring, they just do it. They throw caution to the wind and do as their impulses please. She’s tried throwing caution to the wind before, a few times, but it never quite works. She always feels like an awkward teenager whenever she tries. She just… Can’t. And she can’t help but wonder, is that because she was programed like this?

It’s a safe bet, and she has entertained the idea before that while she will always be a clone, could she be reprogrammed? She’d have to look into the AVAs to learn that. She knows so many were developed and for different purposes, so maybe she wasn’t designed to be reprogrammed. That would support her factory reject theory. If she was broken and could be fixed, her creators would have done just that. Even if she can be reprogrammed, does she really want that? She would still be wired to specified settings, even if she designed them herself. Not to mention any designs she created would be influenced by her original makers, as she is currently operating with the brain _they_ gave her. Besides, what if she doesn’t totally hate who she is right now?

She doesn’t, for the record. Sometimes she likes being the serious one, and she is proud of how clearly she can keep track of decades worth of serial killers and their own personal histories without needing to write any of it down, regardless of what Sara thinks of it. She just… she wishes she could know if the reasons she can do that, the reasons she can do anything she can, are because of her lived experiences and her natural personality, or because someone programmed her that way.

She wonders if there even is a line where the clone ends, and where she begins.

“Ava?”

“Hm?” She asks, looking up from the book she hasn’t turned a page on in over an hour.

Sara is laying next to her, propped up on her elbow and her brow furrowed with concern.

“I said I’m gonna turn off the light. Are you ok?”

“Yeah.” She says, marking her place and closing her book. “Just zoning out, tired.”

Sara smiles, “Well, time for us to go to sleep then. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

She kisses Sara goodnight just as the light goes out, and as she settles onto her side she pushes the thoughts of _why_ deep into the recesses of her mind where they belong.

It doesn’t matter why. She can’t change it, but still she wonders, if she could… If she could make it so she was never a clone. So that her parents were real and she had been born and raised like an actual person. If she could make it so that had been her path in life… Would she?

She honestly doesn’t know.


End file.
